The Rest of the Robots [8 stories, 2 novels]

What Hacker News says

1. krappSep 2023
   Daily reminder that Asimov was a writer, not an engineer, programmer or AI researcher. His three laws were not a serious attempt at formulating a logic-based morality system for machine intelligence, they were a macguffin meant to facilitate the inciting incident of mystery stories and thematically symbolic of the futility and hubris in even attempting to do so.

   Taking them seriously is about as absurd as taking the "post scarcity economy" of Star Trek seriously. They don't work, they're designed not to work.

       In The Rest of the Robots, published in 1964, Isaac Asimov noted that when he began writing in 1940 he felt that "one of the stock plots of science fiction was ... robots were created and destroyed their creator. Knowledge has its dangers, yes, but is the response to be a retreat from knowledge? Or is knowledge to be used as itself a barrier to the dangers it brings?" He decided that in his stories a robot would not "turn stupidly on his creator for no purpose but to demonstrate, for one more weary time, the crime and punishment of Faust."[0]
   
       “There was just enough ambiguity in the Three Laws to provide the conflicts and uncertainties required for new stories, and, to my great relief, it seemed always to be possible to think up a new angle out of the sixty-one words of the Three Laws.” (The Rest of the Robots, 1964).[1]
   
   

   [0]Isaac Asimov (1964). "Introduction". The Rest of the Robots. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-09041-4.

   [1]https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/253748/how-did-isa...

   Also the posted "article" is just the three laws themselves, listed. Can the mods change the URL to point to the Wikipedia article[2] which at least has a lot more content and context to base a discussion on?

   [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics

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2. krappJun 2023
   Sorry to break it to you, but he was a pulp writer. The Three Laws aren't at all deep, they're shallow by design. They are presented in universe as being absolute and unbreakable, and inevitably they break, creating an apparent paradox similar to a closed room mystery, except in this case, the closed room is the supposed infallibility of perfect machine logic. It may be possible to explore them as a thought experiment but fundamentally they're a plot device.

       In The Rest of the Robots, published in 1964, Isaac Asimov noted that when he began writing in 1940 he felt that "one of the stock plots of science fiction was ... robots were created and destroyed their creator. Knowledge has its dangers, yes, but is the response to be a retreat from knowledge? Or is knowledge to be used as itself a barrier to the dangers it brings?" He decided that in his stories a robot would not "turn stupidly on his creator for no purpose but to demonstrate, for one more weary time, the crime and punishment of Faust."[1][2]
   
       “There was just enough ambiguity in the Three Laws to provide the conflicts and uncertainties required for new stories, and, to my great relief, it seemed always to be possible to think up a new angle out of the sixty-one words of the Three Laws.” (The Rest of the Robots, 1964).[3] 
   

   [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics

   [2]Isaac Asimov (1964). "Introduction". The Rest of the Robots. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-09041-4.

   [3]https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/253748/how-did-isa...

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3. dalyMay 2022
   I guess we could ask Dr. Susan Calvin :-)

   (see Asimov's I Robot and/or Eight Stories from the Rest Of The Robots)

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4. tunesmithAug 2018
   Here's the order I read them in:

     I, Robot (1950)
     Foundation (1951)
     Foundation and Empire (1952)
     Second Foundation (1953)
     The Caves Of Steel (1954)
     The Naked Sun (1957)
     The Robots Of Dawn (1983)
     Foundation’s Edge (1982)
     Foundation and Earth (1986)
     Robots And Empire (1985)
     The End of Eternity (1955)
   

   I haven't actually finished the final two because it took me a while to find Robots And Empire. I'll have to reread from the beginning.

   Here’s Asimov’s recommended order. This one is pretty much chronological for characters, I think, which would spoil some narrative twists. Kind of like how watching the Star Wars prequels first would spoil The Empire Strikes Back.

     Either The Complete Robot (1982) *or* I, Robot (1950)
     The Caves Of Steel
     The Naked Sun
     The Robots Of Dawn
     Robots And Empire
     The Currents Of Space (1952)
     The Stars, Like Dust (1951)
     Pebble In The Sky (1950)
     Prelude To Foundation (1988)
     Forward the Foundation (1993)
     Foundation
     Foundation and Empire
     Second Foundation
     Foundation’s Edge
     Foundation and Earth
   

   And here is an Expanded Chronological order, which includes books written by other authors after Asimov died:

     I, Robot
     The Rest of the Robots (1964)
     The Complete Robot (1982)
     Robot Dreams (1986)
     Robot Visions (1990)
     The Positronic Man (1992) (co-written by Robert Silverberg)
     Mother Earth (1948) (minor inconsistencies)
     The Caves Of Steel
     The Naked Sun
     Mirror Image (1972)
     The Robots of Dawn
     Mirage (Mark W. Tiedemann) (2000)
     Chimera (Mark W. Tiedemann) (2001)
     Aurora (Mark W. Tiedemann) (2002)
     Have Robot, Will Travel (Alexander C. Irvine) (2005)
     Robots And Empire
     Caliban (Roger MacBride Allen) (1993)
     Inferno (Roger MacBride Allen) (1994)
     Utopia (Roger MacBride Allen) (1996)
     The Stars, Like Dust
     The Currents Of Space 
     Pebble In The Sky
     Prelude To Foundation
     Foundation’s Fear (Gregory Benford) (1997)
     Forward the Foundation (MINUS the final section of the epilogue)
     Foundation and Chaos (Greg Bear) (1998)
     Foundation’s Triumph (David Brin) (1999)
     Foundation
     Foundation and Empire
     Second Foundation
     Foundation’s Edge
     Foundation and Earth
     The End Of Eternity (not really in order apparently, kind of in its own time)
     Nemesis (1989) (not really in order, kind of on its own)
   

   I got these lists from somewhere online years back, I think a stackoverflow site, but I'd avoid them because they also talk about spoilers even in listing the names of the books.
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